


Becoming

by Miss_M



Category: True Detective
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Flash Fic, Gen, Identity, Transformation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-08
Updated: 2015-03-08
Packaged: 2018-03-16 23:06:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3506123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_M/pseuds/Miss_M
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Crash is not an act. Crash just is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Becoming

**Author's Note:**

> One day, I’ll be able to rewatch this show and not need to write fic at once. One sad, sad day. I own nothing.

Rust locked Crash up in his old man’s Army footlocker, used it as a bookshelf for his forensics and criminal psych library. Utility paired with irony. 

It’s all there, where he buried it for safekeeping: the jacket, the bottle he cannot not open and sample right away, the scuffed old flask, the weapons. All make his fingers itch with recognition. 

Rust never buried Crash or left him in his rearview mirror, not really. 

When he gets in people’s personal space, the primal intimidation technique, the way canines stake out territory and social structures, that’s Crash. Crash knows nothing can hurt him. 

When he stops his hand just short of landing on Marty’s bicep while his partner’s pitching a fit in his wife’s workplace, that’s Rust keeping Crash under control. Rust knows people can get hurt.

This is why he refuses to get pulled into other people’s to-and-fro bullshit, the man-woman drama they concoct rather than take a long, hard look at themselves. Rust’s bones and muscles ache, the pricks of cayenne and ink on the thin-skinned inside of his elbow are a numb flame. Crash is a hangnail, he snags and tears. Marty, Maggie, Rust himself – none of them would want to meet Crash in a dark alley. Even Ginger is an act, he puts on his skin and his leathers, pretends he is what he wants to be, a leader, a man to be feared, in control.

Crash is not an act. Crash just is.

Dewall Ledoux looks at Crash and sees Rust, a man made of acid and shadow, something which spreads and corrupts and infects, like an oil spill. What the fuck does Dewall know, men of his ilk never see below the surface. They don’t know how to look. 

It would be easy to say Rust submerges himself in Crash, nine tenths out of sight, his id all there is to see, that Crash is nothing but teeth and fists and endurance. It would be too easy: comforting lies usually are.

If Rust could slough Crash off, Rust would be long dead. A disguise so thin every meth head and outlaw wannabe from here to El Paso could spot the narc in their midst. 

Out there, Rust never has to forget himself or lose himself. He is thick and compact, made one if not whole, Crash always ready to slip right on and squeeze Rust breathless. Crash has no skin, he’s all exposed nerve endings, sixty heartbeats per minute, capillaries fully distended. Alert yet unmovable. A stone with jitters. 

After Marty kills Reggie Ledoux, and everyone from CID to the Attorney General lines up to swallow their bullshit song and dance, and ask for seconds, Rust locks everything back in his Pop’s footlocker, binds that vampire with books instead of stones and stakes through the heart. 

Everything save the flask. He starts carrying that around, a smooth weight with edges which dig into him through his jacket pocket. So he doesn’t let himself begin to forget.


End file.
